This headline is up there with "Trump Indicted" and "Dog Bites Man" for predictability, but it's worth exploring for a moment, because there are some trends underlying the popularity of EVs, especially here in places like Palo Alto. The main one is that they do primarily seem to be Teslas, and not other brands like Polestar or Rivian; the other is that, being Teslas, they're on the more expensive end, though I'll admit I'd find it hard to identify the electric versions of normal cars as I run past. The upshot, though, is that on my run this morning, I counted 96 American-made cars, and 49 of those were Teslas.
Taking a step back, this is one of the things I think about when I'm running (another prominent one being the Roman Empire, of course). I don't listen to music or podcasts when I run, because I want to be able to hear cars or bikes behind me, so I either think about history or I conduct little ad-hoc market research projects by counting certain types of cars.
I've been doing it for ten years now, and I've been running in the same neighborhood, so I've got a general sense of car buying trends, at least for that section of South Palo Alto. There might be a different picture if I crossed Oregon and/or Middlefield, but that'll have to wait for when I start training for marathons again.
Sometimes I count SUVs or Priuses, other times I count by country of manufacture, i.e. the US, Japan, Germany, Europe (counting British, Italian, Swedish cars, for example) and South Korea. Sometimes I'll count by manufacturer, and sometimes by sub-brand, though I have a better sense of that for Japanese cars, rather than all the brands that sit under GM, for example.
The trend I've discovered in previous years is that Japanese brands are the most common here, and not by a small margin: on a run a few years ago I counted over a hundred Toyotas alone, and a slightly smaller number of Hondas, with a few other brands here and there. Next most popular were German cars, predominantly Mercedes and BMW, with a few Audis but not many VWs. Lagging behind them were American cars, and on one of my runs I calculated that Teslas accounted for about one-quarter of the total.
As you can imagine, that number's been going up in recent years. I like to joke that Palo Alto has an obscure law requiring that a Tesla (previously a Prius) be visible at all times in public, but the truth is that even Teslas lag behind Japanese cars and SUVs. Still, this was the first time that Teslas accounted for more than half of US brands parked in South Palo Alto driveways.
I've been seeing a lot of talk online recently about the reasons people buy EVs, and environmental reasons are low on that list. One former grad school classmate proudly said that she got hers five years ago to avoid gas stations, and friends who own a Tesla have also said that's a benefit.
There's also an element of conspicuous consumption: the reason I can count how many Teslas there are in my neighborhood is that no one covers them up. I remember laughing about how one house had two cars in the driveway, but the non-Tesla was covered up and the Tesla wasn't. Even when someone does put a car cover over their Tesla, it's helpfully branded so that everyone passing by can see what car it is.
Conspicuous consumption is probably why I don't see a lot of Chevy Bolts/Volts or other brands. To put it another way, the supply of cheap EVs is limited anyway, but if the average Palo Alto buyer was price-conscious, you'd see more of them (I wasn't counting Fiat 500s this morning, electric or gas-powered, but I'd have certainly noticed if there were any around).
On the other hand, Tesla sure does have advantages over other EV brands, premium or "cheap". The first one is brand recognition, since it's been selling cars for a lot longer - I've been seeing Teslas on my route since 2014. That first-mover advantage means that Tesla has had time to build more cars, and time to build more factories to increase supply even further. Contrast that with Rivian, which may make better cars than Tesla, or it may not, but it simply hasn't had the time to build out its manufacturing capacity; whatever the factor, I didn't see a single Rivian truck or SUV on today's run.
The other advantage Tesla has is its charging network, which is more widespread than rivals' networks and is also more reliable. The Biden administration has proposed rules to get uptime of non-Tesla chargers up to 97%, but Tesla's availability is better than that right now. As a result, a lot of EV makers are making their cars compatible with Tesla's network (which has also been politely asked to open up to other brands) and providing adapters.
Coming back to the conspicuous consumption thing for a moment, it's frustrating that the options for EVs seem to boil down to Tesla, Rivian, Polestar, and the only moderately affordable options are the Chevy Bolt/Volt and Nissan Leaf. I've read that the EV market is a lot more widespread in China, in part because you can find EVs for under $35,000 dollars.
It's great that a bunch of people with single-family homes in Palo Alto can afford to buy Teslas, but none of the dedicated EV brands seems to be doing anything for the next segment of consumers. Rivian is helpfully making a less expensive version of their SUV, but it's set to cost $40,000, which isn't exactly mass market pricing. Similarly, Tesla's cheapest Model 3 costs about $43,000, and that's without any add-ons like increased range and fast charging.
EV makers aren't the only ones at fault here, by the way. The availability of chargers is a crucial part too, because who wants to buy a car that they can't refuel/recharge? The Biden plan for chargers may address rules for how well they work, but they're still being built the same way as traditional gas stations: they are being placed in parking lots and other designated places that don't cater to people who live in higher-density housing.
One of the things that impressed me on my trip to Munich was seeing curbside chargers on the street, where you'd normally see parking meters. The US (and other countries) will have to place chargers similarly to cater to all the people who live in condos or urban areas and can't just plug their EVs in at their own garages.
These thoughts are all a little far away from the number of Teslas I see on my morning runs, but this is where my mind goes when I start counting them like this. Regardless of how I feel about certain people associated with Tesla, or generally about Tesla owners' driving abilities and regrettable license plate choices, I'd love to see more EVs around - particularly because on today's run I got to drink in a cloud of particularly smelly diesel from a pickup by a building site. I just fear that if the EV companies only cater to the type of people who'd buy Teslas or Rivians, they'll have trouble making cars for people who want Civics and Camrys.
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